Machine code

Machine code is the native language of a computer processor. A computer can execute machine code without the need for an interpreter or compiler, whereas other languages are translated into machine code either directly - before execution using a compiler or during execution using an interpreter - or indirectly - compiling to a language for which a compiler or interpreter already exists.

Any programming language can be regarded as machine code for a hypothetical machine capable of executing its code directly, but this concept is particularly common for esoteric programming languages for which the construction of this hypothetical machine would be relatively straightforward, such as MISC.